Death is Permanent

The piece has the title Death is Permanent because of an experience I had. I was acting director of a regional museum while the director was on sabbatical. She wrote all the grants before she left but messed up on the financial page of the grant to the state arts commission. The woman from the arts commission and I had a long talk about what had to be done. I had to redo the financial page and sign it. We both knew when the director came back she would be furious with me. The arts commission lady told me that she would write a letter to cover me. But before she could write the letter she unexpectedly died. I sat bolt upright in bed one night trying so hard to will her back down to earth. And that is when I really experienced that death is permanent – very permanent.

 I personally find guns frightening, although I have friends who use them. I did ask a policeman friend of mine to shoot my piece, which he did. The holes in the piece come from a real gun as do the shells on the image. While in Chicago many years ago his wife and I walked past a space in the street with the chalk lines for dead bodies. Just those lines – nothing else, and of course the caution tape…it is an eerie feeling to walk past knowing not long ago a person lay there – alive and then dead.  I included a child in my embroidered outlines because so many children are victims of gun violence these days. In my opinion there needs to be serious conversation about the issues surrounding gun violence, gun ownership, and how to allow the general public their constitutional rights without the rest of the population feeling threatened, especially as we continue to have so many school shootings.